Scott Campbell of We Got This Covered appears to have a handle on who might be showing up as the big bad in Black Panther 2, which amazingly is the only Marvel movie coming up that has a release date set at this point. We’ll have to wait until 2022 to see this follow-up to the first movie, but so far it’s sounding as though a rumor that’s been passed around a few times might be feasible enough to fan into gossip and possibly a reality if things go right. For comic book fans this would be a big deal but for a lot of casual fans it might be time to say ‘who?’ once again with the inclusion of Namor, the king of Atlantis in the Marvel universe. If you don’t know who he is don’t feel too bad, he hasn’t gotten a whole lot of play outside of the comics and he’s never been added into the movies as of yet, so he’s bound to be a big surprise whenever he does show up. But on a scale of being awesome to just kind of awkward Namor does fall squarely into the awesome camp since he’s one of many powerhouses in the Marvel universe and has had an issue with a lot of heroes and villains in his time. In fact for a while he was known as one of those that Fantastic Four were seen to fight against more than once in their long history. But bringing him into the Black Panther sequel would be interesting since T’Challa and Namor do have history.
It might be tricky to bring Namor into the fold since he’s owned by Universal Studios and trying to make him a major player could meet with some trouble. But bringing him in at all would be kind of great since it would introduce yet another Marvel character that people haven’t seen and would likely enjoy, hopefully. Namor and T’Challa had had their scraps in the past and somehow it’s been seen more than once that T’Challa, who has enjoyed a great deal of power from his own natural skills and the technology he uses, has actually bested Namor. Given the Atlantean king’s strength and durability this is quite a feat since he has powers that T’Challa can’t match and his strength levels are well beyond T’Challa’s no matter that the Black Panther does have the heart-shaped herb granting him superhuman qualities. Namor though is a natural mutant, and his power is even greater when he’s underwater, as has been shown in the comics.
Also in the comics though it’s been seen that the two monarchs have been at odds with each other due to interactions between rogue factions of their countries that have put them into situations in which the hot-headed Namor usually makes the situation worse. One can’t absolve Black Panther of all blame since he too can be a little stubborn about various things, but the fact that he takes Namor to task so often is kind of hard to take really given the disparity in their abilities. That martial arts background is hard to deny though since when it comes to fighting, Black Panther doesn’t have a whole lot of rivals in the Marvel universe that could take him down when it comes to going toe to toe. Still, Namor landing more than one decisive punch to T’Challa would be enough to put the Black Panther on notice, and if the fight was to go beneath the waves the only way that T’Challa could win would be to rely on the writer’s that want to make sure that this sequel is going to be just as great as the first movie. Being as that’s the goal it’s also an argument for Namor to actually make an appearance, but again it’s going to depend on how things go with Universal when it comes to how prominent Namor can actually be in the movie since the rights to the character are kind of a sticky issue that Disney needs to tread carefully around. Plus there’s the idea of who would play Namor, and there are already a few names that people could think of, such as Brian Tee, Zachary Quinto, Tyler Hoechlin, and even Daniel Dae Kim as is suggested by Josh Roush of Screenrant.
There’s also the idea that Shuri, T’Challa’s sister, was supposed to take over as ruler of Wakanda at some point, but obviously Chadwick Boseman, the man behind T’Challa, wasn’t too happy to hear about that. He just became king after all, which makes it difficult to accept that he might be outed at one point, again, by yet another family member, especially one that he actually likes and relies on. But, like always, we’ll see how things go and take it from there.
